Pets, Peeves, and People of Nextdoor

Nextdoor.com calls itself the “private social network for your neighborhood,” and a photograph on the app — of a clean white sidewalk carving a path through lawns of manicured grass — conveys that this is a safe space. People seek and find babysitters, dog-sitters, house-sitters. They raise money for local causes, furnish the homes of those in need. They also display a fair bit of paranoia about “suspicious” characters lurking on street corners. And every day, in every neighborhood, a cat goes missing. Here, a sampling of people in the greater Portland area who took to the site over the course of a month to connect with their neighbors.